I just figured that we needed something to talk about so here is a whole slew of things that I have thought about. Here is a list of my suggestions that I have for the game organized by type of suggestion.

Game Mechanics:

1) Redo the tutorial to make it where it runs as a permanent tourney and when a new player starts they start with a tutorial character that will be auto retired after 2 weeks. At any time they can choose to end the tutorial and start with their real character with full knowledge that it is a nub character and all that entails. If they do finish all the parts of the tutorial they should start out with 100k or something as a reward for completing it. This ties in with another suggestion I have.

2) Fix up the interface with the game to make it look much more pleasing. This also includes making it so that players can use different looks as well. I believe we still have the option to do so, but no one has made any for it ever since part of it changed.

3) Continue to improve upon the tournament system. Namely allow for there to be multiple tourneys running at 1 time. This will allow for the tutorial tourney, and also a year long tourney that people are interested in. For now we obviously don't have a high enough player population for many tourneys to be run at once, but I think that if we got enough of them we could start adding chosen players who are capable of starting new tournaments and running them.

4) Change the ba regen system. Right now there is only 1 set amount that people can get and that is entirely dependent on size of their character. For a lot of people it seems to be a little counter intuitive to make it so that the game becomes easier to work with once you reach a higher size. The basis that you have invested in it and are getting your reward for your work is understandable but I think a system that rewards continual hard work would be better. What you do is add a difficulty bonus that you can set in the Settings page. Arbitrarily I am going to use 0-20% as the bonus option. At 0% difficulty you will regen 5 ba per 20 minutes and it will cap at 250. This is a very lenient amount of time for casual players. For the more hardcore difficulty at 20% you would regen 10 ba per 20 minutes and cap at 150.

To avoid abuse from changing it all the time. The ba regen and cap will only change at cache flush where whatever amount is set in the settings page is what will take into effect.

The incentive to play at the higher difficulties is that you will be getting that bonus to your rewards. Now this would also likely come with a reward drop overall so that people aren't just growing faster no matter what. Probably about a 10% drop in rewards for both $ and exp.

In answer to the problem of CP generation you can use an increased scale. The current bases are 2, 4, and 6 instead you could multiply these by an amount based on the ba regen to accommodate for it.

5) Reduce the negative challenge bonus exemption for the characters with 60% of the top MPR or more. Instead of it being a clearcut exemption it should be a slowly ramping one based on how close you are to the top. This would have to be based on PR rather than MPR but the base requirement is to have 60% of the top character's MPR. For those teams just barely in the exemption it should likely only be around 5% and ramping up to around 30% maybe higher for the very highest ones.

Gameplay Balance Suggestions:

1) Remove the ranged penalty for FB and return the friendly fire to what it was originally. Fireball is a little underpowered as it is right now. It is a ranged focus spell so it is only right that its main power comes while in ranged.

2) Put UC onto a linear damage model. Basically make it so that a specific amount of levels of UC gives an increase of 1 x. To balance this since it would make the damage from UC increase by a large amount remove the 1.2x multiplier to the PTH. So then the pth is the UC effect. I believe that this probably also affects the halidon familiar though I am not so sure about that one.

3) The ex/axbow should be modified so that as x approaches infinity it approaches 100% drain on the % side. This is for the base amount unmodified by hp. In the early stages the curve should be very friendly so that a small exbow is still useful. The larger it gets the less increase in % drained per hit. So an x100 exbow should be able to drain around 30-40% in a hit and an x5000 exbow should be able to drain like 70-80% in a hit. In addition to this the direct drain should be based upon current str rather than the base str. This means that it should include GS granted str and also take into account a weaker str after a few hits. Lastly with these changes the way that PL absorbs the ex/axbow drain should be changed so that it doesn't lead to an invincibility. Instead of taking the drain and working off of the PL minion's stats what should happen instead is that while the PL user will still drain off each hit entirely while it still has positive str it should absorb the str damage just like hp damage. The tank would effectively lose say 2 mil str from the hit so the PL wall absorbs that at a 90% efficiency and loses 1.8 mil str. If at the next hit the PL wall's str is 0 or less then he doesn't absorb any str drain at all.

4) The PR of weapons should be fixed. There should be a base amount of x that will add no PR but afterwards will start giving a PR weight. In addition the PR weight should be based upon the minion rather than the character just like the way that armor works. Overall this should result in a reduction of PR from weapons on most teams.

5) The amount of GA needed to reach the cap should be increased slightly to account for the reductions in damage that occurred a while ago.

New Spells/skill suggestions:

1) Weapon Mastery. What this would do is increase the bth of melee weapons when trained at a portion of str. Likely this would be around 1/5 of str and grant an additional 40 bth. This way 1h weapons would have 100 bth and 2h weapons would be able to reach 80 bth. This does not work the same as BL at all. BL is a straight increase to damage. This skill would not increase your damage near as much, but it would make it far more effective to fight without pth and be better for fighting against high dex/high evasion targets.

2) Weakness or Cause Fear (whatever you would like to call it). This is an EO. It reduces your opponents enc. There is 2 ways this could be worked. This should probably reduce a flat amount of enc at the same as UC grants enc, which is about 16 enc per level. Another way to work this spell would be to have it work like AS and be dependent on the minion count.

3) Backstab. This will work with both weapons and spells. Trained at a portion of the str if a weapon is the offense or a portion of the DD if a DD is trained this will reverse the normal targeting order. This will not affect spread fire spells or special targeting weapons. When this is trained at less than full effect it works at a % chance per round. So if you have it at .5 effect you have a 50% chance of targeting normally and a 50% chance of targeting reversely. This will not override an AoI.

4) Death Frenzy. This skill will make it so that after the minion reaches death it will continue fighting for 1 additional round. This should probably have to be trained at a portion of HP.

5) Twin Cast. This skill is trained at a portion of DD. The DD functions at the effect of this skill and will cast twice each round. The skill is capped at .75. This would probably be either 1/4 or 1/3 of the DD level.

Supporter Item Suggestions:

1) Beserker Helm. Grants No AC. When the wearer is damaged it gives 1% per + of the damage back as str. The upgrade curve would be about the same as an HoE. How this works with PL is that if the PL minion is the wearer whenever it absorbs damage it would increase in str. If another minion has PL and the wearer is hit but the damage is absorbed then the wearer's str will not increase at all.

2) Amulet of the Blood Mage. Grants no AC. Each + increases DD by 2% and will cause the mage to lose life at .25% of the raw DD level each time it is casted.

I have some more supporter item suggestions but I can't think of them at the moment and this post is taking a little too long to make so I will leave it at this. I will probably add some more to these lists later on.

I fully understand that it would take a very long time to do even a significant portion of these suggestions even if we had a lot more dev time.

Feel free to discuss about anything on here or any other suggestions you may have for the game yourself.

Combining the drop system and the black market into just 1 thing with a bit of addition. You get black market coins in drops maybe. The one additional thing that should be added in, is the ability to purchase a free retrain. The coins are non trade-able so you have to fight in order to get enough to get a retrain. This will also have the affect of making drops happen more often. The amount of coins for each item and the free retrain can be modified depending on the number of people who are choosing it and the general market price of the items.

Attack Posture pointed out a flaw in my BA regeneration rates suggestion. The solution would be to make it so that you only choose the regen rate instead of it also affecting the BA cap as well. 5 BA regen would still gain more exp during exp time if they maximize it, but it would be less than getting the full day at 10 BA regen this way.

Alright I thought of 3 solutions to that problem. I would like to hear what people think is best. The first one is in the post above. Another solution is to have BA set to 0 if the regeneration rate is changed when it changes at cache flush. Another solution is to have it only be able to change BA rates once a week. This would likely occur on Sunday.

..and start with their real character with full knowledge that it is a nub character ..

I oppose any change that acts as an excuse to continue on the N*B, so I'm against this.

2) Fix up the interface with the game to make it look much more pleasing.

Absolutely.

3) Continue to improve upon the tournament system. Namely allow for there to be multiple tourneys running at 1 time.

Absolutely also. If I was running CB, this would be very high on the list, though as the first step in a sweeping array of related changes.

4) Change the ba regen system.

I'm not sure how (or even if) this is supposed to change the bonus system.

I also see it as a double-dip bonus for those at higher difficulty. A player at a higher bonus AND that much more BA grows at an even higher rate. Not only each each BA worth that much more in rewards, you get that much more to exchange for rewards. It seems counter intuitive to me.

5) Reduce the negative challenge bonus exemption for the characters with 60% of the top MPR or more.

This, as well as widening the maximum challange bonus to 200%. Or higher.

1) Remove the ranged penalty for FB and return the friendly fire to what it was originally.

2) Put UC onto a linear damage model.

Yes, yes.

3) The ex/axbow should be modified so that as x approaches infinity it approaches 100% drain on the % side.

Instead of an asymptotic model, I support one that is weighed against the amount of strength/dexterity on the defender. A x1000 crossbow should not drain the same percent from a 1000 level stat and a 10,000,000 level stat, in my opinion. Somebody a while back had a really great formula for this that I supported, and dropped my own proposal for. Sadly I forgot who that was.

4) The PR of weapons should be fixed. ... Overall this should result in a reduction of PR from weapons on most teams.

Yes.

1) Weapon Mastery.

Not sure this is necessary in the post-uber-Evasion era.

2) Weakness or Cause Fear

How is this a better alternative to Etherial Chains? Yes, it will target mages better, but when going after Encumbrance, you mostly worry about it being a tank issue.

3) Backstab.

My proposal was to retool existing weapons to have different targeting (so polearms target the second in line, whips do SoD style splash damage, etc.). We already have spells with different targeting.

4) Death Frenzy.

Not seeing the usefulness here. The minion is still dead for the purpose of victory conditions. For single minions, it just means more draws or stalemates. For multi minions, it's good for one single extra attack. But only sometimes. Not worth the skill slot, nor the XP.

5) Twin Cast.

I kind of like this. But cap it at 1.00 to prevent more randomness, and max it at 1/3.

Nat I'm going through the tutorial (sanctioned by Verifex) to assist with this right now. When I am done I will be submitting my findings/suggestions to him, if you want to have a hand in it I suggest you drop a CM.

I forgot to add that I think evasion should have the dex penalty removed. After removing defensive dex and bottoming the cth at bth evasion should at least be slightly better in a straight cross over compared with DB.

A lot of good things in there(alongside some which are meh, like, oh, say, the linearisation of UC effect, which is all fine and dandy but only for the "x" part, while the pth and eva part should never, under any circumstances become linear unless you do exactly the same with all CB weapons, the evasion skill and DBs too at the same time)...
...but...
...the real question is, will ANY of it EVER get implemented ?

2) Fix up the interface with the game to make it look much more pleasing. This also includes making it so that players can use different looks as well. I believe we still have the option to do so, but no one has made any for it ever since part of it changed.

User based graphics. ;) Theme engines are good, and jazzing up the look of the site will help players grow to love CB. But we can't ignore tha tin this day and age Games need a graphical content. And wihtout choosing a style and paying for an artist, allowing users to define thier own graphics is I feel the best option.

3) Continue to improve upon the tournament system.

Perm Tournament where every character made has the NUB. And I'd play CB for life. Seriously.

4) Change the ba regen system.

Even with the Cache Flush restriction, everyone will always change at cache flushes on Tuesday and Saturdays for Wacky XP times.

It *will* become a requirement for competitive play.

5) Reduce the negative challenge bonus exemption

Just get rid of it entirely. It's totally counter to CBs design, and flies in the face of the 'challenge bonus'.

Gameplay Balance Suggestions:

1) Remove the ranged penalty for FB and return the friendly fire to what it was originally.

Def. Althought I can't recall the FF being reduced at all?

2) Put UC onto a linear damage model.

This should be done now. It should have been done yesterday. Actually it should have been done when Weapons chanced to linear X values...

4) The PR of weapons should be fixed. There should be a base amount of x that will add no PR but afterwards will start giving a PR weight.

Instead of being fixed, it sohuld be a sliding scale based on that minions STR. If you have a high STR and low Weapon X, you should actually have your PR reduced.

5) The amount of GA needed to reach the cap should be increased slightly to account for the reductions in damage that occurred a while ago.

As UC, this should have been done yesterday. Preferably when Damage was rescaled and HP/GA wasn't.

New Spells/skill suggestions:

1) Weapon Mastery.

I'd increase the BTH gain to match the percentage of damage a max BL gives. Is that 75% now?

2) Weakness or Cause Fear

As mentioned above, that's one of the only benefits EC has. Introduce this, and you hammer the final nail on ECs coffin. EC would need to be massive buffed.

3) Backstab.

Nice Idea. It would give CB the single target, front hitting, ranged DD it lacks. At an XP cost. Or a rear hitting SG/Decay...

Something needs to be done to shake up the AoI/AP Anti SG/Decay front minion...

4) Death Frenzy.

Call it 'Endurance' ;) Have it on a sliding Scale, and have the Minion trainng it live a number of extra round equal to the Level, but be ignored for all targetting purposes. Due to being close to death, they deal vastly reduced damage. Something like that. ;)

5) Twin Cast.

Two Decays hitting the same target each round?

>Supporter Item Suggestions:

1) Beserker Helm.

I still suggest that either a Body Armour or Cloak would be the best slot. With Amulet a close second. This is to stop Junction (Imagine a Jig with VA massive PTH and this Helm boosting it's strength every round...), and make this a painful choice between it or a Tattoo. It will become the best in slot item for a Tank, where ever it's placed, and the trade of for a healm just isn't big enough.

Maybe also add a penalty to using VA with it. If your total life exceeds a set percentage of your HP (either thorugh TSA regen or VA) the bonus from this item stops.

Thematically, I feel a BA (Shirt) or Cloak (Pelt) would fit much better. I suppose for a Helm you could always call it the Iron Crown (Morgoth's crown).

2) Amulet of the Blood Mage.

Why does it have the drawback? DD can't leech with VA and the Tank version doesn't have a drawback.

I forgot to add that I think evasion should have the dex penalty removed.

Totally agree.

BCTH also needs some method to reduce it. I'm not sure that tagging it onto Evasion is the right choice though.

Why not make Cause Fear (as a new EO) reduce BTCH?

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